Describe your dream 4X game

Click here and disable ads!

Plus an undergroup map. Kinda like a game happened on a ballooned up asteroid: the surface, the interior, and the circling small moon.

Then we have small improvement like Orbital Elevator to temporary link moon with surface to allow droptroopers storm the surface, as well as Aquifer wells dug by laser to allow quick in-out invasions by interior troops.

Good AI, with a collection of well-tested gameplay strategies.

Well, a 3D SM's Alpha Centaury also works.

Make it an alternate dimension not an underworld and I'm sold.

The Dream 4x? A game that runs all the way from the beginnings of Civilization to the ends of MOO, where every step you make from the very beginning matters in some way, without crapping out at any point in time. What if Civ didn't simply END when you reached Alpha Centauri? What if that was just...the first half of the game?

Saying a 3D Alpha Centauri also works is like saying that a total utopia with no bad things and only hapiness is good, but if God himself came to Earth to estabilish the perfect existence, it also works.

The world needs a good Alpha Centauri remake. It ins't even hard to make it perfect, just update graphics to 2011 standards, increase faction limit (or make a customisable one, even better), put in some better AI, the end. It would be a GOTY game for the next decade. Considering how much Firaxis seems to be sucking, I would be afraid to see them doing anything else to the game. I think its some stuff with EA that stops them, SMAC is very well know today, if remade right, it would sell like cake.

Your idea, combined with Cassidy's, is very good, too.

You're reading in my mind, aren't you? While it would be a crapload of work, I think it would be perfectly possible to release a sequel/addon that lets you lead your civilization after it obtains the spaceflight technology and conquer the stars. Especially if most of the engine from the first half of the game could be used in the other half.

From memory, SMAC could use something to put the brakes on city sprawl. I believe there is some sort of remake in the works?

Why should there be a brake on city sprawl? You ever heard of urbanization process in modern age?

NO no. What's needed is the optimization in game code so there's no lag due to sloppiness. There is still lags due to lots of other factors, but at least eliminate the sloppy game code.

BTW, is Planetfall good? PLayed it once, didn't like much, but it was a long and I think my mod was wrongly installed. Also, I hate the graphics and the slowness of cIV, that game was made by drunken coders and artists who loved bright, light things. The SMAC pallete adapts weirdly there.

Bumping this thread back for great justice, I love to talk about 4X games.

One thing I think every 4X game needs is a constant feeling of menace. It gets boring when you reach nº1 place and then no one can take you down, no matter what happens, and you know it, and it bores you. If life was a 4X game, Rome, Persia or China would've already conquered the world because they were so much big that they would've eventually been able to simply take over their opponents.

There needs to be tension and menace, both from within and without. Managing a large empire should have challenges of its own, and conquests should't be so dirty cheap and easy. Conspirators trying to know you from your rule and all kinds of far-away menaces trying to attack your empire are but one of the many ways to make the game more dangerous.

Inflation, corruption, regional riots, race riots, anarchy movement causing riots. What is the cause(s) of the disintegration of British empire, Soviet bloc, Americana sphere of control?

So now that the CK2 demo is out... is the new dream 4x game CK2... IN SPACE?

They really need to have some inevitable civil war every so often the larger you are, and have it be bigger the more sizable the empire. Also, to have more neutral cities and small empires, with real chance of them truly banding together into one empire if they come under enough pressure.

But wouldn't it be frustrating for the player to have his empire that he put so much effort into destroyed by an inevitable internal strife? While I agree that riots and uprisings should be an important issue in a large empire, the player should have some means to prevent them, either by granting his citizens freedoms, propaganda or a rule of terror and purges.

Instead of having the game penalize you so heavily that being big itself is the challenge why not make a game where the scope constantly expands. As you get bigger and expand more the game world expands and get's bigger introducing new challenging opponents. That way you can have the satisfaction of defeating your opponents and getting bigger but can still have a good even challenge curve and avoid the dropoff you get halfway through most 4X games.

I suppose the hardest part to doing this would be that you would have to limit the size and scope of the game initially to the point where it might not be that fun. You could overcome it some by taking the spore route(not to the degree they did though) and have earlier gameplay empires being abstracted some so they can be condensed and then you can try and keep all stages of the game fairly large. Although you might run into the problem that spore did where each gameplay section was different enough that it was be like designing several different games.

Rather than focus on a bunch of 4x stuff, I'd rather have this one thing:

Autistic levels of micromanagement. I WANT TO EQUIP EVERY ONE OF MY HUNDREDS OF GUARDS, DO YOU HEAR ME?

That's actually one of the really annoying things about Aurora and HoI3. Having to assign commanders to all your armies and even administrators in Aurora get's very tedious, the MoO2 system of having hero mercenaries was much better.

This is why you're going to lose in Garfunkel's Aurora LP.

Just because I think it's annoying doesn't mean I didn't do it

Forged Alliance has this, partly because you only need to assassinate the commander to win, and no matter how big your opponent, there are ways of doing it, such as tech 3 bomber avalanche or well situated artillery installations, or experimental artillery if you are playing UEF. Once my commander was assassinated by a Galactic Colossus (an experimental assault bot), just before my own experimental bot was able to destroy it. The downside is that the game never reaches truly epic proportions without unit restrictions such as "no air" and "no artillery" -- someone will always find a way to assassinate your commander before the game turns into a SimCity.

(Still, compared with games like Warcraft and Dawn of War, the game does have epic proportions, with the cheapest units being a thousand times less effective than some of the experimental units. A Galactic Colossus can literally mow down a thousand light assault bots. And with the unit cap at 2000, you do have many strategies open to you. No other game of this type has such potential for massive battles. (A warning: the sequel is dumbed down and scaled down garbage: not worth the time it takes to download.))

There are also very effective ways to protect your commander, such as putting him under a shield generator network covered by strong AA, or putting it under water. But in my experience the game is over well before the time of experimentals and T3 bombers if you are playing to win.

Because constantly beating bigger scoped assailants is still ultimately lacking in tension. You constantly just beat opponents of your level, and then move on to higher leveled enemies. Constant success by design, if you play decently is numbing to me - rather have a game of back and forth dynamics, where you actually are expected to occasionally lose territory and such, instead of failure just meaning that your empire is not growing as fast as it could.

Well, it's a matter if you want a dynamic strategy game or just enjoy building big fancy empires.

It wouldn't have to be designed around the assumption that you always win. The idea would be that new opponents would have the potential to defeat you or make you lose land as well. You can still have fun in a strategy game even if you are not a major power. I think paradox games are a good example. It wouldn't have to follow the oblivion level scaling difficulty curve(or lack of a difficulty curve).

The more I think about the idea the more interesting it sounds to me. Imagine for example a civilization type game. At first you could start out with only primitive technologies and the map would just be the surrounding local areas and you are competing with other local tribes. Once you get more advanced technologies (specifically those tied to communication and travel) the game world could expand to cover larger areas and what was the previous gameplay area could be condensed some (like every 4 squares merging into one square or something) and close settlements and military units could merge. You could of course be able to interact with off map entities (like trading relationships/colonies) and how that went would effect what the expanded world was like. Maps wouldn't necessarily need to be square but could have natural borders (like seas, deserts, mountains, and just plain vast distances). How you played and what decisions you made in previous eras could build up to effect the overall culture of the civilization you have in later eras. This could keep happening multiple times until eventually you had the entire world as a map or even beyond if the game was to go into space. You could also make gameplay in each era different in ways to match the way that societies worked in those times (like each paradox interactive game for each era is set up differently to account for the way society was at that time). You don't have to make the gameplay just blobbing and getting bigger either. You could even have gameplay mechanics to simulate the rise and fall of specific empires/nations.

It would be a lot of work of course since you would basically be designing several different strategy games that are able to interconnect together so it would be a ton of work and I doubt it would ever happen but this is the dream 4X game thread.

Master of Magic with:

• multiplayer
• user defined number of realms (vanilla MoM is N=2, regular and myrror)
• more heroes with better lore, with more tiers like: standard hero < greater hero < lordly hero < epic hero < godly hero (vanilla MoM had lesser, greater, and Torin)
• more artifacts with better lore, and more artifact slots
• more retorts (special abilities)
• more special locations and nodes to find books and retorts
• updated tile sets, graphics, combat animations, and AI

I can't imagine a better 4X

Seconded. Definitely Alpha Centauri with additional maps like in Civ 2 Test of time.

Actually, Civ2 Test of time was pretty good with the Fantasy and Sci-Fi campaigns or the standard campaign with Alpha Centauri map, available after space ship was launched.

It would be really cool if the SMAC remake would include the Earth map or at least some link between two planets. Maybe united Earth trying to invade AC and regain power over the rebelling collonies or Ivasion on Earth by colonists from AC.

However what is definitely needed is an in-game alarm clock or automatic shutdown after certain time. I remember almost missing some important real life events because SMAC lacked such feature.